A hazelnut in Germany.

My last class today was with the DFK 2 class. DFK stands for Diagnose- und Förderklassen, and is for children with special needs or learning difficulties. There are only 10 children, but they all have problems with anger management and control, and have conditions such as ADD/ADHD. My experiences with them so far have been very mixed... either they are completely lovely, and give me thier attention and tell me stories about themselves, or they are trying to kill each other, and during those moments it is very clear that I am just an assistant and telling them to stop and go and do something else has absolutely no effect. It's a bit worrying that I always seem to be with this class when the teacher doesn't turn up for half of the lesson, or has to go and deal with another class, and leaves me to supervise them. This means that it's just a cycle of them getting more and more noisy and lively, and then me somehow getting them under control and quiet, only for them to get chaotic again.Luckily, everytime she comes back into the class room, I've somehow managed to get them back under control, and we are sitting quietly in a circle, but I'm dreading the day she comes in and the kids are all running riot!

Today, after the initial ignoring-me-and-trying-to-kill-each-other-instead phase, I enjoyed the lesson. One of the kids is in my English club, so he told the other kids my name means Haselnuss auf Deutsch, and suggested we play the game we played at English club. So we taught the others, it's a game where you sit in a circle with one space free, and the person to the left of the free place has to say '1, 2, 3 ______ [one of the other names in the class] come to me' and then that person moves places, and the person to the left of the new free place starts again. Quite often one of them would say '1, 2, 3, Haselnuss come to me' but it's quite cute and I'd rather they call me Haselnuss than ignore me...

It's also very cute when I leave school and everyone says 'Tschüs, Haselnuss'', ''Byyeee Haselnuss''.

After the game, they sang the German song they've been learning with their class teacher, and it goes like this:

Die Fische, die Fische sind heute fröh,
sie schwimmen durch's wasser und machen so:
blop blop blop blop blop, blop blop blop, blop, blop
blob blop blop blop blop, blop blop blop, blop, blop

[a rough translation, though I assure you it sounds better in the original:]

The fishes, the fishes, they are happy today,
they swim through the water, and go like this:
blop blop blop blop blop, blop blop blop, blop, blop
blob blop blop blop blop, blop blop blop, blop, blop

It was a bit strange the first time I was in the class, and the teacher suddenly got out a guitar and started playing, and they all started singing along. I like it though, and because the teacher has to speak so clearly and slowly for the children, I understand nearly all of it.

However, the verses continue, with frogs, ducks, and doves, BUT in Germany, the frogs say 'quack' and the ducks say 'schnat'. Which is just confusing.

The song is also ridiculously catchy, so I have had it in my head all day!


[Edit: A few days after posting this, I had a sudden inspiration for how this could be translated so that it would still rhyme, and fit into the original rhythm of the song:

The fishes, the fishes, they are happy today,
As they swim through the water, this's what they say:

and then all the blops, as in the original.

Maybe there's a career to be found in translating children's songs and stories? ]